Noodling Around: Editors I Have Known and Loved

Joel J. Gold

Chronicle of Higher Education, March 7, 1997, page B7

I once thought -- foolishly, as it turned out -- that when I left the
adverstising game for academe, trading in my copywriter's cubicle for a
faculty office, I was through forever with copy chiefs, account
executives, and clients "noodling" with my writing. It had
been a painful couple of years for me, regularly submitting my sparkling
prose to a copy chief who would glance briefly at my words and then say,
"It looks all right. But let me noodle with it for a while."
Then he'd finger my metaphors, sully my syntax, and meddle with my
meaning.

Although he almost always sharpened my copy, I hated the whole process.
The problem was compunded by the account executive, who, having caught
the bug from the copy chief, would do a little noodling of his own. Of
course, then the client, who was paying the bill, improved the final
product in his or her own fashion. I became so sensitized that I began
to noodle with my own prose even after I thought it was finished, hoping
to anticipate the later noodlers with a few pre-emptive strikes. It
never worked.

In my new career, I quickly realized how foolish I had been in hoping to
escape the ministrations of editors. Scholarly journals required me to
get past their editorial committees and outside readers, who had both
helpful and not-so-helpful suggestions. Academics like myself who
occasionally publish beyond the ivy walls must run yet another gauntlet
of hard-eyed editors.

Naturally, what any writer wants to hear is simple: "A wonderful
article: informative, crisply written, a delight. We shall publish it
tomorrow."

As all experienced contributors know, an article is never published
tomorrow and rarely even next month. And an author's dream of sending
in a story or an article so brilliant that the only possible response
-- outside of a chorus of "Hosanna!" -- is against the Editor's Creed:
"Well, Dr. Freud, it's not bad. With a few changes in this section ..."
Noodling with other people's prose is a universal pastime, in and
out of academe.

My first scholarly article was a distillation of my doctoral
dissertation. Nervous lest my examining committee discover, after the
fact, that the whole thing could have been boiled down to article
length, I sent off a generous number of words to the journal in
my field. The editors liked it but thought it rather too long. Only
later did I realize how gentle they had been with me, suggesting that,
while a 71-page article on Dr. Johnson's translation of a French
translation of a Portuguese Jesuit's manuscript might well appeal to
their readers, wouldn't it be better to cut the article in half so that
other aspiring authors might get to see their work in print?

Reluctantly, I cut 35 pages, all the time worrying about my
graduate-school committee spotting the essence of my dissertation as a
slim 36-page typescript. Even worse, the printed version came to a mere
12 pages. On the other hand, the publishing process took so long that
half of my committee had retired by the time the article appeared. The
others had forgotten me and my dissertation.

The editor of another journal was less restrained and less accepting. I
wrote the story of Benjamin Franklin's finding three flies drowned in a
butt of madeira, managing to revive one of the three, and then wondering
how it would be to be "bunged up" in a cask of madeira wine
for 50 years, whereupon one could come back "to behold the
flourishing state" of America. The story itself was less
remarkable than the fact that Franklin, the rogue, had repeated the
performance years later -- complete with fly -- at a dinner party in
France. Same punch line -- to presumed applause. The skeptical
editor sent the piece back. Among other objections, he said he doubted
that Franklin would do that sort of thing.

I wrote to the editor of Yale University Press's edition of The
Papers of Benjamin Franklin, who assured me that it was exactly the
sort of thing that Franklin would have done.

Occasionally, the less-high-powered journals provide insights into their
editorial processes. The editor of another journal also rejected the
Franklin piece. but the returned manuscript was accompanied by a note
from the secretary: "I loved it." Below that, in pencil, was
added: "Me, too -- the night cleaning lady."

An editor of a Dickens journal struck a nicely non-judgmental note in
his letter accepting a short peice of mine. "I am not sure your
surmise is correct,"he wrote, "but it is certainly
persuasively argued." I think most of us could live with that.

A more personal editorial approach to acceptance or rejection compounded
my anxieties in a tense moment at a scholarly conference. I had sent
the Harvard Library Bulletin a long essay on the radical
politics of John Glynn, an 18th-century English sergeant-at-law. Afer a
month or so, the editor wrote to tell me that the first reader had
recommended publication. Normally, he explained, he would send the
article out to a second reader, but he had just discovered that I would
be delivering a shortenend version of the paper the following month at a
conference that he planned to attend. He would, he announced, listen to
the paper, check out the audience response, and then make his decision.

Nervously, I read may paper and answered most of the questions aimed at
me, all the while trying to spot this editor. Somebody in that
audience was the editor of the Harvard Library Bulletin. Was
it the man who was skeptically shaking his head all the way through my
talk? I hoped not. The one dozing? Maybe.

Could it possible be the one who queried me -- to my great
horror -- in the discussion period: "You know what you are/"
Then, pausing long enough for me to envision my brief academic career
disappearing in smoke, he pronounced me "a storyteller" -- a label
that I doubt any serious scholar covets.

As it turned out, the editor was none of the above. Afterwards he
introduced himself, and we had a pleasant cocktail together to seal the
bargain. But I do not ever want to go that editorial route again.

I suppose my favorite editor was Redmond O'Hanlon, an editor at the
Times Literary Supplement in London, who commissioned me to
review a translation of that same Portuguese Jesuit's manuscript that I
had dissected in my dissertation. I was living in London at the time, so
we discussed length and deadlines over the telephone. A day before the
piece was due, I was sitting at the typewriter going over my
just-completed third and final draft when the telephone rang.

It was O'Hanlon. "I merely wanted to find out how you are
doing,"he said. "Do you think you'll be able to meet
tomorrow's deadline?"

I told him that I had finished the piece, was checking the copy one more
time, and was just about to drive to the Times office in St.
John's Lane. There was a long pause.

"You are going to deliver it here this afternoon?"

"Yes,", I said, "within the hour."

"Oh, my," he said. "You are a splendid fellow!" I wish I
could capture in print the inflection of that splendid
"fellow." Never have I met a more astute editor. I was almost
tempted to send back the cheque for £70, but in the end I took the
pounds and the "splendid" and made a nice weekend out of
them.

I'd like to conclude on that positive note, but a more accurate, if
oblique, appraisal emerged -- or so I've been told -- from a meeting
of senior editors. On vacation in Chicago one July, I was surprised to
receive a telephone call from an assistant editor at a weekly newspaper
chronicling higher education. I had written a few comic pieces for her,
so she knew how to trace me even on vacation. She apologized for the
timing but explained that the paper ws planning a special back-to school
issue for early September. "The senior editors," she
added, "haven't told us much about it but we do know there'll be a
number of sections looking at the year ahead -- for teachers,
students, legislation, and so on."

I was interested but couldn't see where I fit in.

"They were talking about the back page," she said, "and
how it might be good to have some academic heavyweight write a serious
piece on the same theme."

I waited.

"But then," she went on, "someone said, 'That might be a
bit dull. Let's see if Gold will do one instead'"

In all fairness, I don't think she ever considered the implications of
what she had said. And I do not remember the headline that actually
accompanied the essay. In my family, though, the piece has always been
known as "Requiem for a Lightweight."